The Polish Plumber should go back to Poland where he belongs.

The Indian Doctor should go back to India where he belongs.

The Portugese Waiter should go back to Portugal where he belongs.

The latter three statements would be judged racist and zenophobic, not even the BNP would get away with it in a confertence speech, why should Gerry?

Thanks for the inspiration CS, I’ll be back.

There is not one coherent theme in this wordfest.

It confirms what I’ve always thought about SF, a single issue party surrounding itself with a ragbag of socially liberal and economically populist policies.If you are progressive in politics there’s something here for you, just turn a blind eye to the rest.

In England, the Gove policy (and even its New Labour predecessor) is clearly an attempt to create a grammar school type academic ethos without entry selection (specialism). Pressure to raise standards is growing also because more and more middle class parents in the big cities cannot afford the private school fees which have risen exponentially. (Believe me, I’ve paid them). It’s probably the only viable approach politically viable in England. But it might be adapted for NI to substitute local choice for political deadlock, that’s my point.
The NI scene is different from England. Grammar schools educate – is it 60%?_-unlike England where they survive in only a few council areas and the name of the game is to create specialist schools and improve teaching standards generally. In NI the grammar school character of many schools has blurred and a kind of reform is happening through inertia. Why not do the thing properly?

Nothing will happen until the DUP recognise there is a problem and there is general agreement over what the problem actually is. Costello and Bain have not actually been refuted. What the reports didn’t do as far as I can see, is lay out the detailed strategy of reform. In the meantime, quite a few schools will continue to underperform due to the oversupply of places in the existing school structure combined with a shrinking budget over time. Even the best schools will probably feel the strain too.

I favour transparent area based planning based on collaboration and sharing so that as everyone can see a model of how the entire secondary schools estate throughout the province could be related to an “entitlement framework” i.e. a curriculum for all aptitudes and talents.

The province is compact enough to allow area planning to be subject to democratic scrutiny. Parental choice based on relating budget to demographics could then be exercised locally to take into account a fairly wide entitlement framework ( ie curriculum ) which would require sharing and whatever degree of integration the public wants locally. How would public opinion be tested? By the number of applications to each school group.

Integration should continue to be a local option. A comprehensive integration strategy would be a stage too far. But if the gains were clear locally, parental choice could bring it about. I don’t see why a strategy like this couldn’t be politically viable. It doesn’t set out to a Big Bang pipe dream and it keeps everyone involved. Reform cannot be imposed.

There should be a comprehensive system that constantly assess children from the very beginning until the age of 14 when their future will be determined on their entire academic history and not on one solitary exam.
No school should ever be “preferred” over another – they should all provide identical first class all-emcompasing education.
At age 14 there needs to be a three way split – academic, vocational and military, for the intellectual, physical and out of line

There needs to be input from industry and academic sources in order to produce the work force and entrepreneurs we need in order.
And finally when they reach the age of 18, well-rounded and prepared to advance our society, only the very very gifted should be allowed to enter the university education – the idea that all should ever reach territory education should never have been allowed to get past the “brainstorming” exercise Blair’s cronies thought up.

The longer this farce over selection at 11 goes on the more children are damaged at every level

In our time.

You’ve gotta love the qualifier.